Charlton Print Run vs Sales Numbers 3 3

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, steveinthecity said:

As an example for those wondering, here’s one from the letters page in MTU #116.  

[Get Marwood & I]

Christ, they're hard to read aren't they Steve @steveinthecity No wonder I ignored them!

[ThreeSeas]

I remember reading, years ago, that any publisher that uses the US Postal system to deliver their comics or magazines has to include these statements once a year. (In fact my current "Good Old Days" magazine had a SOO printed in (microscopically - really tiny) in the December issue).

My Dells that I am scanning have Statements of Ownership numbers in them too. The earlier Dell SOO's did not have the print run numbers listed, only the issues from the late 50's/early 60's had actual numbers. In scanning my collection, I started with my Disney Dells and I make three or four different page scans per book: Front Cover, Back Cover, Indicia page, and Statement of ownership if it is in the book. If I think of it when I get home tonight, I'll post some Disney SOO's

 

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, ThreeSeas said:

I remember reading, years ago, that any publisher that uses the US Postal system to deliver their comics or magazines has to include these statements once a year. (In fact my current "Good Old Days" magazine had a SOO printed in (microscopically - really tiny) in the December issue).

Some of the Charlton ones are, I thought, deliberately illegibly small too:

2 minutes ago, ThreeSeas said:

My Dells that I am scanning have Statements of Ownership numbers in them too. The earlier Dell SOO's did not have the print run numbers listed, only the issues from the late 50's/early 60's had actual numbers. In scanning my collection, I started with my Disney Dells and I make three or four different page scans per book: Front Cover, Back Cover, Indicia page, and Statement of ownership if it is in the book. If I think of it when I get home tonight, I'll post some Disney SOO's

 

Yes please CCC 

[ThreeSeas]

Oh, as to why they publish these numbers really small. Mainly to not make it easy for your competition to know how good (or bad) your issues are selling. I fricken had to get out a jeweler's loop to read the numbers in the before mentioned Good Old Days magazine

[Get Marwood & I]

1 minute ago, ThreeSeas said:

Oh, as to why they publish these numbers really small. Mainly to not make it easy for your competition to know how good (or bad) your issues are selling. I fricken had to get out a jeweler's loop to read the numbers in the before mentioned Good Old Days magazine

You could have some fun with that couldn't you - put "F off Stan" in the SOO of a Batman or something.

[the blob]

17 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Post me a DC one Blob, go on 

Good golly, I don't keep track, I just remember a batman one I looked at and was horrified that like 65% of the newsstand copies were going unsold

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, the blob said:

Good golly, I don't keep track, I just remember a batman one I looked at and was horrified that like 65% of the newsstand copies were going unsold

Holy carp sell through figures, Batman!

[Get Marwood & I]

58 minutes ago, 15Years said:

You never read your Spider-Man issues? 

Of course not, I just looked at the pictures. Silly.

[the blob]

20 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Don't diss the kid Blob 

 

I assume Charlton's Billy the Kid had something gong for it as it lasted a long time. Then again, Battlefield Action started in like 1960 and ended in 1984, but was only 89 issues... some of the 60s ones look decent. I just find it amazing that a company published for so long and seemed like such a mess, but honestly, if they were actually selling 100K++ copies of Billy the Kid, maybe they weren't such a mess, just not a company that made many memorable comics. "The Question", Peacemaker, and Captain Atom seem to be the only characters created by Chalrton that still exist (Blue Beatle was created by another company). Somehow they managed to get licenses for popular cartoons and such in the 70s and for a long time were pretty big on romance comics. It does seem like they were just trying to create cheap product and didn't really have a good idea of the pulse of buyers and trying to create lines of comics people were hooked on like marvel did. 

 

[Crimebuster]

I love statements of ownership, they are awesome. 

They seem to be very sporadic before the later 60's. You can find them, but before that it doesn't feel like every title had them for some reason, and the ones that did had less complete information. Statements from the 50's or 60's that I have seen often don't have the sales numbers, which make them basically useless. 

But from the late 60's through the late 80's at least, the major newsstand publishers all had them regularly - Charlton, Marvel, DC, and Archie. I presume Gold Key as well, but I don't have any of those. 

My understanding is that the sell through rate is the most important thing for the publishers, more than the number of copies sold. I've read that for Marvel, something like a 40% or lower sell through meant cancellation - I've seen that cited before as a reason for the cancellation of the first Doctor Strange run, for instance, that it had a poor sell through. So in order to sell the same number of copies as another book, they had to print and distribute more, making it unprofitable. Books with sell through rates above 50% were doing well. 

My memory from going through way too many Bronze Age Superman titles is that they were annual, published in the issues cover dated January? Meaning an actual distribution date of October? That's from memoery, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the statements were from October one way or the other. You can watch over the years as the sales drop and drop and drop across the Superman line. Over on Wonder Woman, I recall a massive drop in sales when they started doing the big 25 cent issues with the reprints. They did tow issues in a row that were all reprints and no new content, and the book was bi-monthly, so it was basically 6 months between new stories, and sales dropped like 25% or something. 

[the blob]

37 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Westerns were huge in the 50s/early 60s. It seems like half the shows on tv were westerns, so I'm not surprised western comics sold well.

I think kids graduated from Batman to westerns and war comics, 

 

I understand. DC built an interesting character with Jonah Hex and he lasted a while. Marvel had their guys. Some of these other westerns seem so bland and generic. I've never read the Billy the Kids, maybe they put some effort into them.

[Get Marwood & I]

Just now, the blob said:

I assume Charlton's Billy the Kid had something gong for it as it lasted a long time. Then again, Battlefield Action started in like 1960 and ended in 1984, but was only 89 issues... some of the 60s ones look decent. I just find it amazing that a company published for so long and seemed like such a mess, but honestly, if they were actually selling 100K++ copies of Billy the Kid, maybe they weren't such a mess, just not a company that made many memorable comics. "The Question", Peacemaker, and Captain Atom seem to be the only characters created by Chalrton that still exist (Blue Beatle was created by another company). Somehow they managed to get licenses for popular cartoons and such in the 70s and for a long time were pretty big on romance comics. It does seem like they were just trying to create cheap product and didn't really have a good idea of the pulse of buyers and trying to create lines of comics people were hooked on like marvel did. 

 

I love the pre-1967 Charlton era myself which has a certain charm to it. More about that love here, if you're ever at a loose end....

[Get Marwood & I]

8 minutes ago, Crimebuster said:

I love statements of ownership, they are awesome. 

When you can read them! 

8 minutes ago, Crimebuster said:

My understanding is that the sell through rate is the most important thing for the publishers, more than the number of copies sold. I've read that for Marvel, something like a 40% or lower sell through meant cancellation - I've seen that cited before as a reason for the cancellation of the first Doctor Strange run, for instance, that it had a poor sell through. So in order to sell the same number of copies as another book, they had to print and distribute more, making it unprofitable. Books with sell through rates above 50% were doing well. 

Here's a random thought - based on the earlier posts the suggestion seems to be that Charlton printed double what they routinely sold with one reason being that the subsequent additional copies were produced at low cost once the first half was produced so they 'might as well'. So, is the sell through rate based on sales against the number printed? If so, the additional unsold copies bring the sell through percentage down wildly don't they? So why print them?

I understand how you might need to print 200K to sell 100K. If I send 20 copies to a newsagent and he sells 10, and that happens regularly, then would sales necessarily drop if he was sent just ten? Wouldn't the same number of kids still buy the 10 copies?

[Get Marwood & I]

And while we're at it, why does Liefeld get such a hard time over feet when...

[OtherEric]

1 minute ago, Get Marwood & I said:

When you can read them! 

Here's a random thought - based on the earlier posts the suggestion seems to be that Charlton printed double what they routinely sold with one reason being that the subsequent additional copies were produced at low cost once the first half was produced so they 'might as well'. So, is the sell through rate based on sales against the number printed? If so, the additional unsold copies bring the sell through percentage down wildly don't they? So why print them?

I understand how you might need to print 200K to sell 100K. If I send 20 copies to a newsagent and he sells 10, and that happens regularly, then would sales necessarily drop if he was sent just ten? Wouldn't the same number of kids still buy the 10 copies?

Will try and dig up some more info, but I've always heard that 50% sell-through was typical on the newsstand.  Overprints were always enormous before the direct market.

[shadroch]

15 minutes ago, the blob said:

I understand. DC built an interesting character with Jonah Hex and he lasted a while. Marvel had their guys. Some of these other westerns seem so bland and generic. I've never read the Billy the Kids, maybe they put some effort into them.

Long before Jonah Hex, titles like Roy Rogers, Cisco kid and Hopalong Cassidy  sold insane amounts of books.   Marvel published more Westerns than super-heroes in the 50s.   Coonskin hats sold millions right after Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone hit the airwaves.

I'm pretty sure Dell Comics was the largest selling comic publisher in the 1950s., with Classics being in the top three titles.

 

[Lazyboy]

2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I don't recall seeing one of these 'Statements of Ownership' tables in any other publishers books

The information may be laid out differently, but it's the same stuff.

[Lazyboy]

1 hour ago, the blob said:

they become much more informative in the 80s when you can see the split between newsstand copies and direct distribution.

No, that never happened. It's always total numbers.

[Lazyboy]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Christ, they're hard to read aren't they Steve @steveinthecity No wonder I ignored them!

You should appreciate Wolverine 98, then!